REVIEW - Duke Nukem Forever

The Boyhood (2014) of video games

Duke Nukem 3D holds a special place in my heart. It was the first “boomer shooter” I ever played, and as a kid I would replay L.A. Meltdown over and over again. I loved the levels, I loved finding secrets, shooting guns felt great - I could just hang out in Hollywood Holocaust and the Red Light District all night long and have a great time. These fond memories as a young boy grew into excitement as I started following gaming news as a teenager, and I started looking into the development history of Duke Nukem Forever.

The longest game in development at the time of its release, Duke Nukem Forever was an event for me. I was on-and-off following the development of the game for about five years up until its release. Following rumours about the game’s potential release, hearing news of it being cancelled, and then development being restarted, and then it being cancelled again; only for the property to be bought by Gearbox Software, which allowed Duke Nukem Forever to finally see the light of day in June of 2011.

Twelve long years of development, and the result: people hated Duke Nukem Forever.

During the days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, having a game be in development for five years was considered a long development cycle, so having Duke Nukem Forever taking more than double that was simply absurd. People’s expectations were more than likely over the moon for this game, people were simply expecting too much from developer 3D Realms.

It’s 2024: we are thirteen years removed from the release of Duke Nukem Forever. With so much time having passed, we are finally able to look at the game with a more neutral point of view. So it’s time to ask: what kind of game comes out of a twelve year development cycle?

Well, twelve years of development adds up to a fairly basic Xbox 360-era shooter.

All of the Xbox 360 shooter fan-favourites are here: You can only have two guns equipped at any time, you can kind of aim-down-sights, night vision (or Duke Vision), regenerating health. Asides from some physics-based puzzles that feel like they were pulled out of an early beta-build of a Source Engine game, everything here is pulled straight out of the 2011 First Person Shooter Game Design Playbook.

But really - and I mean, really; two guns? That’s all we’re allowed to carry? During this era of first-person shooters, only being able to have two guns equipped was fairly standard, but for a game that was trying to bill itself as going back to FPS games of the late 1990s, you would think that they would want you to be able to have a full arsenal of weapons. Nope! Two guns! Hope you like having the machine gun and then something else with you for the whole game, because that was my load out for the majority of my play through.

There are some interesting weapon options available: you have the shrink ray, which allows you to shrink enemies down and stomp them to death; you have the freeze ray, which lets you freeze enemies and punch them into a thousand shards; the devastator - a rapid-fire missile launcher - is pretty fun to use. It’s not like Duke Nukem Forever isn’t trying, they have weapons that help make the game interesting, but due to your limited allowed arsenal you only use these weapons few and far between. It’d be much more fun if you were allowed to carry these weapons throughout the whole game, but the game is simply not designed for you to have these more “powerful” weapons for the whole campaign. It’s a shame, because being able to use these power-weapons are some of the few fun parts of Duke Nukem Forever.

I’m just happy that modern “boomer-shooters” have come to their sensibilities, and allow you to carry two-thousand weapons with you at all times, should be illegal to have it otherwise.

Duke Nukem Forever does try to slightly liven the gameplay up by adding three basic items: steroids to make your punches stronger, beer to make allow you to soak more damage, and the Holo-Duke, which spawns a Duke Nukem hologram for enemies to be distracted by as you pick them off one-by-one. They add some variety to the gameplay, but honestly I forgot I had these items half the time, and it doesn’t make the game much more fun either. There doesn’t feel like there’s any power behind Duke’s punches, so steroids aren’t fun to use; and drinking beer causes your screen to get so blurry that it just annoys you. I played Duke Nukem Forever at a solid 0.05BAC on average, and I never felt my vision get like that.

But lets get to those sprinkles of Source Engine games I mentioned earlier. Duke Nukem Forever does feature some physics-based gameplay, mostly in the forms of “man see-saw go up” or “make big thing smash into wall.” These “puzzles” - if you could call them that - are scattered sparsely throughout the game, and does its best to help break up the monotony of the game’s shooting galleries. You can tell that 3D Realms wasn’t trying to design Duke Nukem Forever around this type of gameplay; it feels more like an effect from: “Hey, Half Life 2 is super successful right now, lets try and do that!”

Because Half Life 2 was super successful when they were on year five of twelve making Duke Nukem Forver.

Sure the physics puzzles add something extra to Duke Nukem Forever, but the physics themselves just don’t feel right in the game. Items that should feel like they have great power behind them - like a wrecking ball - feel like they’re made of paper mache. Barrels that sound and look like they’d be empty drop to the ground like they’re a thousand pounds, and can’t be thrown very far. The weight and balance of all items in the game - outside of human shit - just doesn’t feel right, and takes away from the physics-based gameplay that Duke Nukem Forever attempts to execute on. It’s not bad, it’s just disappointing.

I mean the physics are passable, and they certainly work; but between items not feeling like they have the correct weight behind them, and puzzles that are incredibly simple to solve, it’s not like the physics-based gameplay enhances the Duke Nukem Forever experience.

So the moment-to-moment gunplay is a bit banal, so what does Duke Nukem Forever do that’s interesting? Similar to Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Forever’s world has quite a bit of interactivity to it. Do you want to play a few rounds of video poker? How about drawing pictures on in-game white boards? Better yet, how about grabbing mean ole’ grumpers out of toilets and throwing them around the bathroom? Duke Nukem Forever allows you to do all of these, on top of many other interactive elements. It does make the game’s world feel more alive, and one of the few elements Duke Nukem Forever does that make the game interesting.

These deviations from the shooting help add a breath of fresh-air to the world, add some variety, and also rewards the player. Duke Nukem Forever rewards you for interacting with the world and engaging in these gameplay changes by increasing your maximum health - or, your “ego.” Only specific world interactions will increase your maximum health though - mostly peeping at titty-mags or throwing shit at the walls is what will give you the boost in health. The game tries its best to liven up the world, it’s just unfortunate that the game’s world is a disgusting one to be in.

Duke Nukem Forever is home to an absolutely horrendous world. The colours in the world are absolutely disgusting - browns and beiges that define the Xbox 360 era are alive and well in this game. On top of the terrible colour choices, there seems to be this gross smear over Duke Nukem Forever at all times, causing the game to look very washed out. If it’s not washed out browns and beiges, the game will throw you into caves or sewers that are so dark that you will be forced to use your night vision, causing the game to be a dull blue-and-white mess. I felt like I played almost half the game in Duke Vision, so I hope you like blue-and-white night vision!

Duke Nukem Forever’s gross aesthetic culminates into a game that just has horrible vibes. Nothing about the look of the game makes you want to hang-out here, nothing in the world makes you want to just sit there and vibe. Duke Nukem 3D’s showed that you can make a game about aliens invading Earth, and have a world that you would still want to hang out in. Have a seat in a movie theatre, tip your strippers, Duke Nukem 3D almost directly asks you to stop and chill for just a moment. Duke Nukem Forever dares that you even try and hang out for a moment, and not feel completely gross about the whole thing.

The entirety of the experience just feels uninspired: you have bland shooting, you have terrible aesthetic choices, you have boring music, there’s very little going on in Duke Nukem Forever that gets you excited to keep playing, and the story certainly doesn’t help either.

You play as the titular Duke Nukem, and the aliens are back from Duke Nukem 3D to ruin his day again! They shot up his ride (probably)! They’re taking away all the babes, and it’s up to Duke Nukem to be a vigilante hero and save Earth - and the babes - yet again! It’s essentially a re-tread of Duke Nukem 3D’s story, but honestly what were you expecting? Were you going into Duke Nukem Forever expecting a well told story? No, you weren’t; and that’s fine! This game doesn’t need a good story, as long as the writing is funny, then it’s all going to be fine!

Unfortunately, the writing isn’t that great. If anything, the writing in Duke Nukem Forever is a time capsule - you can tell they’ve been working on this game for 10+ years based off the jokes being told. Lines from a 2001-era script mixed in with Team America: World Police quotes, mixed in with meme-level writing that feels right at home with it’s 2011 release. If there’s any point of the game that you can see the age of Duke Nukem Forever, it’s in it’s milquetoast writing, and sadly, a Duke Nukem game with poor writing is a pretty big issue.

Hey guess what? Duke Nukem Forever released in 2011 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC - so you know that the game had to have a multiplayer mode shoved in there. Now I enjoyed my fair-share of Duke Nukem 3D’s deathmatch with my friends on Xbox Live, so I get why Duke Nukem Forever has it; but it might be hard to believe, but no one’s play Duke Nukem Foever’s online modes in 2024!

I remember having a fun time with Duke Nukem Forever’s online mode. Sure when you’re playing with friends anything can be a bit fun, but it was better than the other games that had their tacked-on multiplayer modes during this generation. The game’s levels were fairly well designed, being able to use weapons like the freeze ray were fun - it’s where the game “shines,” if it shines in the slightest.

But again, this is Duke Nukem Forever, nothing is going to be perfect. The game was plagued with - you guessed it - launch issues where lag was absolutely unbearable. You’d see 6 Dukes just teleporting all over the maps, dying to a rocket you never even heard coming at you. It was an absolute travesty that is too be expected for games launching today. It was sort of fixed a few weeks after launch, but by that point word had gotten out about Forever, people were sick of the connection issues, and - at least on Xbox 360 - people had dropped it to go right back to Halo: Reach or Call of Duty: Black Ops. Overall - the lag issues were kind of funny.

Duke Nukem Forever is every single middle-of-the-road Xbox 360-era FPS game that has ever been made, put into one game. The shooting is passable at best and boring at worst; the elements surrounding the game’s gunplay don’t add enough to make it interesting; the writing isn’t great; and the overall vibes are just way off. It’s very hard to say anything nice about the game. Outside of the crowning achievement of the game actually being released, there really isn’t much going on in Duke Nukem Forever to make it worth playing.

With all of that being said: this was my third time playing through Duke Nukem Forever. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a fan of the game by any stretch, but for some reason, every four or so years, something draws me back to this pile of sludge. I’d never recommend the game to anyone based off the game’s own merits. I have had more people message me on Steam, Discord, and through text message if everything was okay solely on the fact that they saw I was playing Duke Nukem Forever. People see this game as a cry for help - and this is coming from people who were playing Borderlands 3 as they are messaging me their condolences!

I guess what keeps me drawn to Duke Nukem Forever is the history of it. I remember as a young-teenager all the way up to my young-adult years fascinated at the development cycle of this game. I remember reading forum threads from years prior about magazine previews of this game that - at the time - had been in development for almost seven years. Nowadays, hearing a game’s been in development for seven years is standard for a AAA game; hell some developers now spend twelve years developing their games and that’s considered only kind of abnormal. Duke Nukem Forever was a major anomaly up to and during its release, and it was something that quite a lot of people got caught up in.

People might say different nowadays due to the quality of the game, but I remember people being excited for Duke Nukem Forever. Some were excited simply because they loved Duke Nukem 3D, and they were wanting a new Duke Nukem game. Some were excited to finally see what a twelve year development cycle would produce. Even the people who were certain this game would come out bad still ended up playing it at some point, all because of the decades-long build up the game accidentally received. That’s something that, outside of what Rockstar Games produces, we probably won’t see again — people coming together after waiting over a decade for a game, just to see if the it’ll be a steamin’ pile or not.

Let’s be honest - the game isn’t horrible. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong - any few shining moments Duke Nukem Forever has are overshadowed by dull gameplay, aesthetics and vibes that are just completely off, a story that has nothing going for it, and writing taken straight out of 2006; but you can do far worse on the Xbox 360, even if you’re looking at games that came out that same year.

It’s a relic of 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2011 all wrapped into a single game - it’s every single “middling” game released on that generation of consoles, in a single video game. Duke Nukem Forever might not do much right, but if you want to experience what “bog-standard” would be for that era, maybe take and hour or six out of your day to play this pile.

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